“Donglegate” is classic overreaction—and everyone pays

Or, how not to deal with difficult social issues.

Watching "Donglegate" unfold over the past few days has been like watching a comedy of errors slowly metastasize into a tragedy of thoughtlessness. News coverage of what unfolded at (and after) this year's PyCon developer conference has already been written; I'll assume that you’re up to speed. What follows is straight opinion about a silly situation.

As events unfolded from Sunday until today, partisans quickly formed to weigh in on some key questions. Was SendGrid evangelist Adria Richards right or wrong to take offense at the jokes in question? Were the two male developers out of bounds with their "dongle" comments? Did they even say the things they were accused of? Was taking the matter right to Twitter the wrong way to go? Was the termination of two people—including Richards herself—a preferred outcome? How did DDoS vigilantes get involved in a complaint over some genital jokes? Finally: how long until the lawsuits?

Let's start by spreading the blame where it's deserved: on nearly everyone involved. The "Boy’s Club” mentality is thankfully no longer acceptable in tech, but it's still common—some people have actually described tech to me as "men's work." The jokes appear to run afoul of PyCon's code of conduct, which strives to create a welcoming atmosphere for everyone, and their unfunny-ness is equaled only by their lameness. “Forking a repo” and “big dongles” must rank somewhere around "0.5: classless brospeak" on the seismic scale of harassing/menacing behavior toward women. While such sexually inappropriate comments are completely unnacceptable in professional settings (to many men as well as women), neither merits firing unless someone had a history of making unwelcome comments. A teaching opportunity should not generally be turned into a termination event. (PlayHaven, which employed both developers, says that it will not comment "on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways" with one developer, so it's not clear what the exact situation here was.)

Suddenly, a couple off-color jokes represented all the serious forces that can hold women back from tech careers.

Yet these two men don’t get all of the blame. One recurring theme on message boards and chat rooms, including our own, is that while Richards had every right to report the behavior of the two men to conference organizers, snapping their photograph and posting it publicly to "Twitter shame" them was a step too far (speaking of a step too far, there are other, more repugnant recurring themes among commenters, too). They're right; going public was not the only way Richards could get a relatively minor issue addressed. She could have confronted the two men or she could have gone straight to PyCon. Her actions only escalated the situation.

In a blog post explaining the story in her own words, Richards wrote about how, over the course of the jokes, she moved from “I was going to let it go” to “I realized I had to do something.” The moment of decision came after seeing a picture of a young girl on the main stage who had attended a Young Coders workshop. “She would never have the chance to learn and love programming,” Richards wrote, “because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.”

Clearly, this is hyperbole. These two guys weren’t going to prevent anybody from doing anything. Suddenly, a couple off-color jokes represented all the serious forces that can hold women back from tech careers. While denouncing bad behavior certainly has its place, proportion is important—and this approach to these jokes simply makes it harder to have a sincere discussion about misogyny and men's/women's issues in the workplace.

Richards decided that her method of intervention would combine public shaming on Twitter as well as pinging PyCon organizers to do something about the incident. Richards said that she “was a guest in the Python community and as such, I wanted to give PyCon the opportunity to address this.” This is why she did not confront the two men directly. Instead, she pinged PyCon and, well, the rest of the Internet. Sledgehammer, meet nail. (To its great credit, PyCon appears to have handled the issue well, speaking to both parties and securing an apology from the developers.)

In the aftermath, one of the developers lost his job and Richards eventually lost hers too. While I believe that Richards unfairly shamed these guys in public (two wrongs don’t make a right, as they say), PlayHaven and SendGrid emerge as the real reputational losers here. Ironically, the companies shared in the same core mistake Richards made. The asymmetry of incident and response has now elevated Donglegate from dust-up into life-changing event for at least two people, and it didn't have to end this way at all.

On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs.

What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. Even PyCon has since updated their Code of Conduct due to this situation. Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol.

A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.

tl;dr: it's a bit of a 3-way:* They disagree (as many do) with the way she handled the event* They feel she can't effectively be a dev evangelist for them anymore (can't fault them on that)* She indirectly put the whole business and customers in dangers (which is probably a reference to the DDOS)

I came across that image while poking around for image ideas for this story, and Peter made an excellent observation: "dongle" jokes are obviously mainstream and tame enough that you can air them on the largest commercial broadcast in the world (eek hope that's true, it's big though!) and apparently no one blinks.

We don't know what the joke actually was, and I'm not even really trying to excuse it, but I do think it's fascinating that it's apparently part of our cultural experience, and not just limited to bearded programmers.

Everyone lost today. Tech, the Python community, the programming community, men, women, the 2 people who got fired, everyone.

Perhaps Adria should have exposed their behavior in some other way, like writing to the PyCon people directly, or turning around and speaking to the guys herself. But she didn't. And you know what? The "hey, look at these assholes!" pic and tweet kind of stuff happens all the time, all over the world. You or I have probably done something similar, but it just faded into the background of inane content that no one cares about. Regardless of her previous behavior online (which quite frankly, seems to be a little racist at times), I don't feel that she was in the wrong in this specific instance.

Basically, two dudes said something stupid. She tweeted "look at these assholes!" PlayHaven extremely overreacted by firing one of the dudes. Parts of the Python and perhaps parts of the general programming community extremely overreacted to Adria. SendGrid overreacted slightly by firing Adria.

Yes, SendGrid needs to have developer advocates that can represent their company in a good light. I think firing Adria right now makes them also look bad, in the "Sorry men, she's gone now, can we be friends again? kthxbye!" vein. What SendGrid should have done is give Adria a chance to quell the situation in SendGrid's favor, or at least give her guidance in how to do so. Maybe even suspend her, or some sort of internal corporate disciplinary action, and let this whole controversy end with time. Adria may learn from this on how to handle the internet dragon better, but SendGrid lost the opportunity to have this stronger person work for them. Maybe she won't learn anything from this, but the timing of her firing was still poor PR for SendGrid. Keep in mind, I still don't think her initial tweet was morally wrong.

SendGrid made the mistake of thinking that the few vocal assholes represents everyone. I'd bet the majority of the Python community just wishes that everyone would shut the fuck up and code. Unfortunately, in human behavior, the loud people get the attention, and online, those are assholes and trolls.

Unfortunately, PlayHaven and SendGrid were so afraid of the internet dragon, that they sacrificed two people to it in an attempt to appease. The thing is, the internet dragon is never appeased, it's never full, it's rage and fire never ends. All you can do is turn it's attention elsewhere, or hide until it moves on to other prey.

658 Reader Comments

"To foster" is not "to express," and "to foster" doesn't imply intentionality. Sexualized remarks in professional contexts in response to professional conversation are sexist because they foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.

How?

Because they often make women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome. They are signals that are universally understood but whose meaning is easily denied, as is being done throughout this thread. In the case of women making sexual remarks in response to men's participation in discussions about male dominated fields the behavior is inappropriate and despicable but not sexist. If women made such remarks in female dominated fields, e.g. elementary school teaching, the behavior would then be inappropriate, despicable, and sexist as well.

"To foster" is not "to express," and "to foster" doesn't imply intentionality. Sexualized remarks in professional contexts in response to professional conversation are sexist because they foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.

huh? Not sure what topic we are discussing now, since the remarks were not in response to professional conversation. Also not sure how dongle jokes stereotype anyone. Maybe there is one I haven't heard yet?

Let me butt in with something more empirical. In the past year, someone in the UK had the initiative to set up after-school clubs teaching children how to code. They've been wildly successful; there are now hundreds of these clubs and the rate at which they're growing is still increasing. The important thing to note is the gender balance in all clubs across the country is 40% female, 60% male.

The organisers took a conscious decision not to emphasise any gender characteristics so there was no "boys, take a break from football to learn how to code! Girls, you can make games about dolls!", they just went with "coding is fun".

I think this suggests very strongly that girls don't find anything inherently unappealing about computers. If it's seen as nerdy, they're happy to be nerdy, virtually to the same extent as any boy. I would be utterly unsurprised if, in 20-30 years, the gender balance in computing is as equal as in any other workplace.

I'd agree with you. I think there are all sorts of ways in which gender roles are a consequence of socialisation. There are neurological and physiological differences between men and women, but one would not necessarily expect them to yield such an imbalance in the numbers of men and women working in IT. My point is simply that "HRRRH MISOGYNY" is not a sensible contribution to the debate.

Because they often make women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome. They are signals that are universally understood but whose meaning is easily denied, as is being done throughout this thread. In the case of women making sexual remarks in response to men's participation in discussions about male dominated fields the behavior is inappropriate and despicable but not sexist. If women made such remarks in female dominated fields, e.g. elementary school teaching, the behavior would then be inappropriate, despicable, and sexist as well.

Really? Because likening the male sexual organ to a physical object sounds like those guys were objectifying themselves, not women. What is this universally understood meaning to which you allude? Please, enlighten us. You still have not established your argument. A does not imply B. Try again.

Richards deserved to be fired. The other guys didn't. The most they should have gotten due to high political correctness bullshit is maybe a quick "Guys, guys! Leave the jokes until the women are gone! *slap on wrist* Now back to work."

This is why the feminists get their panties in a bunch over sexual jokes that aren't sexist because no one bothers to try to identify the difference and when it smacks them in the face, they get defensive.

1 : prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women2 : behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex

You're using the first meaning. People who think the jokes are sexist are using the second meaning.

So a woman who makes a dick jokes is sexist?

A woman who makes dick jokes in public at a professional conference in response to a man's joining into a conversation about the topics that the conference covers is sexist, yes.

No, no, no. For this to be similar, those women would have to make melon jokes in the presence of a man.Moreover, you just overplayed your hand : " in response to a man's joining into a conversation"There is no evidence that the dongle joke was told because she joined the conversation. I would EASILY say it was told regardless of her presence.

The guy behind me to the far left was saying he didn’t find much value from the logging session that day. I agreed with him so I turned around and said so. He then went onto say that an earlier session he’d been to where the speaker was talking about images and visualization with Python was really good, even if it seemed to him the speaker wasn’t really an expert on images. He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.

Because they often make women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome. They are signals that are universally understood but whose meaning is easily denied, as is being done throughout this thread.

So, basically, your argument is that women, primarily feminists, are elevating the meaning and intention of a term and its use to be something that is insulting in their own conception of reality and then excoriating men for violating the social etiquette of their contrived reality?

Excuse me while I fetch the world's smallest violin...

Quote:

In the case of women making sexual remarks in response to men's participation in discussions about male dominated fields the behavior is inappropriate and despicable but not sexist. If women made such remarks in female dominated fields, e.g. elementary school teaching, the behavior would then be inappropriate, despicable, and sexist as well.

Josephine. Maybe you should make an effort to read both sides of the story. In the other Ars article about this, the developer in question denies any sexual innuendo in the forking comment. Supposedly, his comments were misconstrued.

Sex is one our most basic instincts, a lot of people have an interest in the subject. I understand that some people may even enjoy it. When people are working in a team and under pressure a risque joke may help relieve some of that pressure. This may not be politically correct but it is human nature.

Of course it is wrong if a member of the team is offended. It is also wrong the the main activity of the department becomes writing and disseminating jokes rather than doing their own work. It would also be wrong id you are in public and therefore representing your company - which these guys must have been for Richards to hear and photograph them.

Keep a sense of proportion and build on the strengths of human nature. If it goes beyond the occasional joke or people are being offended then a bit of management advice is needed.

Only if the offence is really egregious should you go to twitter/instant dismissal.

The guy behind me to the far left was saying he didn’t find much value from the logging session that day. I agreed with him so I turned around and said so. He then went onto say that an earlier session he’d been to where the speaker was talking about images and visualization with Python was really good, even if it seemed to him the speaker wasn’t really an expert on images. He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.

Richards deserved to be fired. The other guys didn't. The most they should have gotten due to high political correctness bullshit is maybe a quick "Guys, guys! Leave the jokes until the women are gone! *slap on wrist* Now back to work."

It is worth noting that only one of the two got fired. To me that suggests that Playhaven is being completely sincere when they say that he was fired because this is not the first time they have had issues with him.

Richards deserved to be fired. The other guys didn't. The most they should have gotten due to high political correctness bullshit is maybe a quick "Guys, guys! Leave the jokes until the women are gone! *slap on wrist* Now back to work."

It is worth noting that only one of the two got fired. To me that suggests that Playhaven is being completely sincere when they say that he was fired because this is not the first time they have had issues with him.

Or rather, only one of them made the dongle joke and he was the one that got fired for that single instance.

Josephine. Maybe you should make an effort to read both sides of the story. In the other Ars article about this, the developer in question denies any sexual innuendo in the forking comment. Supposedly, his comments were misconstrued.

I've read all sides of the story. Cartigan said there was no evidence that the remarks were in response to Richards' joining in the conversation. I quoted evidence that there was. I never said that her account was the one and only true account, and no comment I've made here assumes that it is.

Because they often make women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome. They are signals that are universally understood but whose meaning is easily denied, as is being done throughout this thread.

So, basically, your argument is that women, primarily feminists, are elevating the meaning and intention of a term and its use to be something that is insulting in their own conception of reality and then excoriating men for violating the social etiquette of their contrived reality?

Excuse me while I fetch the world's smallest violin...

Quote:

In the case of women making sexual remarks in response to men's participation in discussions about male dominated fields the behavior is inappropriate and despicable but not sexist. If women made such remarks in female dominated fields, e.g. elementary school teaching, the behavior would then be inappropriate, despicable, and sexist as well.

That's delusional. Straight up.

The definition came from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Is that written by "women, primarily feminists"?

Josephine. Maybe you should make an effort to read both sides of the story. In the other Ars article about this, the developer in question denies any sexual innuendo in the forking comment. Supposedly, his comments were misconstrued.

I've read all sides of the story. Cartigan said there was no evidence that the remarks were in response to Richards' joining in the conversation. I quoted evidence that there was. I never said that her account was the one and only true account, and no comment I've made here assumes that it is.

Fair enough. Even in her version of events, there is no way she could know the forking comment was a consequence of her joining in the conversation. That said, since one cannot be sure the forking sexual innuendo was made, perhaps we we're wasting our time debating what might have prompted its being hypothetically said

So in essence when you are in a conference you can't unwind and just enjoy the get together and the whole community spirit thing, since in essence you're actually your employer's delegate to a political meeting.

And I thought the whole pyCon thing was about python, silly me. I just hope everyone will get the message of "calm the f*ck down" instead of that such places are danger zones for people with a big mouth, boy!

The guy behind me to the far left was saying he didn’t find much value from the logging session that day. I agreed with him so I turned around and said so. He then went onto say that an earlier session he’d been to where the speaker was talking about images and visualization with Python was really good, even if it seemed to him the speaker wasn’t really an expert on images. He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Josephine. Maybe you should make an effort to read both sides of the story. In the other Ars article about this, the developer in question denies any sexual innuendo in the forking comment. Supposedly, his comments were misconstrued.

I've read all sides of the story. Cartigan said there was no evidence that the remarks were in response to Richards' joining in the conversation. I quoted evidence that there was. I never said that her account was the one and only true account, and no comment I've made here assumes that it is.

There would be grounds to fire me if I made a dick joke on my personal twitter account if I identified myself by name and official position. Inappropriate behavior that comes to the attention of employers is inappropriate behavior regardless of when and where it takes place.

It depends in part on your position in the company. If you fired some low level programmer for making a dick joke on their twitter account, you could easily get sued for wrongful dismissal, and you would probably lose. PR people and other company representatives can be held to a higher standard.

While people talk about you know, randomly being able to get rid of people you really actually can't. You have to generally have a reason to get rid of someone, and making a dick joke on their own time is really not going to be grounds for firing them. What if they were a part time comedian?

There is a point at which you cross over into repression of their freedom of speech, and that's very much as illegal as firing someone for being Jewish.

I am a general schedule employee, which means that firing me is legitimately hard. The position I am in is a Congressionally-mandated appointment, which means an act of Congress is required to remove me. If I made a dick joke on Twitter while disclosing my name and position, I would expect to be on administrative leave the next day and fired as soon as Congress was back in session, even though I have no official public affairs role.

Most people (I was going to say under 30 here, but it's probably more like under 50) employed these days are on "at-will" contracts. Let me put this into perspective for you: if I hired you on an "at-will" contract (which you signed) and decided to fire you for being Jewish and told you to your face it was because you are Jewish and listed the reason with HR as "Is a Jew" (assuming I bothered, under the terms of most at-will contracts I don't even have to provide a reason) I would not be liable for wrongful termination. You could press charges on hate speech grounds (and let me be very, very frank here for you middle managers who think this would be a fun thing to do: I would lose because what I did was, indeed, hate speech with zero mitigating circumstances), or sue me for emotional damages (this one is much stickier and would depend on how anti-Semitic your jury/judge was), but your employment is strictly at my determination. If you stubbed your toe and I didn't like how you hopped, I could fire you.

I happen to think "at-will" contracts are a horrible thing and would like to see them disappear, but it's not because most employers abuse them (or even theoretically could). It's because a very small percentage of employers do.

So neither SafeHaven nor SendGrid overreached in firing either of these employees from a legal perspective. They could have told Adria Richards they let her go because she was a "Loudmouthed, bigoted woman who cannot perform the duties of public liaising in good faith" and she'd have no grounds to sue (all of these assertions are provably true with a glance at her Twitter feed).

Keep in mind not having grounds to sue rarely stops people from trying. This is (was?) their livelihood, after all.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Josephine wrote:

Hi, I don't understand reality, and am very sexist, but I'm going to pipe up anyway.

Hi Josephine! Sadly, you have mistaken Ars Technica for some other site, probably because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Sadly, your very incompetency robs you of the ability to evaluate the competency of others.

Perhaps if you were a bit less sexist, you would have less trouble coping with the reality that most people just don't care.

Protip: don't use sexist terms like "mansplaining" when you are whining about sexism.

Seconded, and I would like to add for you mansplainers: just because we disagree with a radical feminist agenda does not mean we are unaware of the caustic workplace environment that remains prevalent throughout the US. Some of us may be other kinds of minority besides female.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

The truth is that at this point there are a lot of entitled people like Richards who believe that they have the right to always have things their way. They are bad people, and are bad for society and should be shamed so that they learn to conform with proper behavior.

This cannot be said enough. Adria Richards may have deluded herself into thinking she was making a noble stand for good and right (whatever those are), but what she has actually done is inflict serious setbacks on blacks, black women, and women in general and specifically in tech fields gaining and maintaining the kind of respect that is necessary for these kinds of problems to diminish naturally.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Actually it isn't evidence - that's a post hoc fallacy. Just because two events follow each other in time, does not mean one event caused the other.

Josephine. Maybe you should make an effort to read both sides of the story. In the other Ars article about this, the developer in question denies any sexual innuendo in the forking comment. Supposedly, his comments were misconstrued.

I've read all sides of the story. Cartigan said there was no evidence that the remarks were in response to Richards' joining in the conversation. I quoted evidence that there was. I never said that her account was the one and only true account, and no comment I've made here assumes that it is.

Because they often make women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome. They are signals that are universally understood but whose meaning is easily denied, as is being done throughout this thread.

So, basically, your argument is that women, primarily feminists, are elevating the meaning and intention of a term and its use to be something that is insulting in their own conception of reality and then excoriating men for violating the social etiquette of their contrived reality?

Excuse me while I fetch the world's smallest violin...

Quote:

In the case of women making sexual remarks in response to men's participation in discussions about male dominated fields the behavior is inappropriate and despicable but not sexist. If women made such remarks in female dominated fields, e.g. elementary school teaching, the behavior would then be inappropriate, despicable, and sexist as well.

That's delusional. Straight up.

The definition came from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Is that written by "women, primarily feminists"?

How is it delusional?

Wow, really? You know full well the post I was replying to waste twice removed from the dictionary quote. I was replying to what YOU said.

I'd just like to represent the population of women in this industry that actually like it. I have a BS in Computer Engineering and am a year away from receiving my MS in Computer Science. I've been secretary,then president of my university's ACM chapter. I like programmers. I like the guys and most of the gals. We make dirty jokes (I, in particular, love the word dongle. Come on - it's a funny word). I make sexual jokes, I make nerdy jokes, I make all kinds of jokes.

We have a club on campus for Women into Computer Science and Engineering, but I don't really see the need. I'm a lady who happens to like something that mostly guys like. But then again I've always been like that (I'm straight, if anyone's starting to question my orientation at this point, and not unattractive). Maybe it's because women seem to make mountains out of molehills and can also be soooo catty, especially in the workplace. Maybe it's because I've found my niche. Maybe if we stop making such a big deal about who's a guy and who's a gal and just get along with people the way we know how, there won't be quite the gender divide that it's perceived there is. Cuz that little girl on the slide didn't know about it until Miss Adria pointed it out...

The guy behind me to the far left was saying he didn’t find much value from the logging session that day. I agreed with him so I turned around and said so. He then went onto say that an earlier session he’d been to where the speaker was talking about images and visualization with Python was really good, even if it seemed to him the speaker wasn’t really an expert on images. He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

You apparently misunderstand what the word "evidence" means the same way you misunderstand what "sexism" means.

Most people (I was going to say under 30 here, but it's probably more like under 50) employed these days are on "at-will" contracts. Let me put this into perspective for you: if I hired you on an "at-will" contract (which you signed) and decided to fire you for being Jewish and told you to your face it was because you are Jewish and listed the reason with HR as "Is a Jew" (assuming I bothered, under the terms of most at-will contracts I don't even have to provide a reason) I would not be liable for wrongful termination. You could press charges on hate speech grounds (and let me be very, very frank here for you middle managers who think this would be a fun thing to do: I would lose because what I did was, indeed, hate speech with zero mitigating circumstances), or sue me for emotional damages (this one is much stickier and would depend on how anti-Semitic your jury/judge was), but your employment is strictly at my determination. If you stubbed your toe and I didn't like how you hopped, I could fire you.

Almost everything you said is wrong.

1. "At will" is not a "contract" that you "sign." It is a condition of employment that exists by default when there is no signed contract. Any signed contract overrides at-will employment conditions. If you have a contract, you are not an at-will employee any more.

2. At-will employment means most certainly does not mean you can be fired for any reason. Even at-will employees cannot be fired for reasons of sex, race, religion, age, disability, or (in some states) sexual orientation. You can be fired for other reasons, like your labor is no longer needed.

3. There is no such thing as "hate speech" that you can "press charges" for.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Actually it isn't evidence - that's a post hoc fallacy. Just because two events follow each other in time, does not mean one event caused the other.

I feel like we're speaking a different language here. What does the word "evidence" mean to you, exactly? I didn't even say that it was true that the remark was a response. I just said that there was evidence that it was.

The guy behind me to the far left was saying he didn’t find much value from the logging session that day. I agreed with him so I turned around and said so. He then went onto say that an earlier session he’d been to where the speaker was talking about images and visualization with Python was really good, even if it seemed to him the speaker wasn’t really an expert on images. He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

You apparently misunderstand what the word "evidence" means the same way you misunderstand what "sexism" means.

Why don't you tell me what the word evidence means to you, then. To me a statement from an eyewitness is evidence.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Actually it isn't evidence - that's a post hoc fallacy. Just because two events follow each other in time, does not mean one event caused the other.

I feel like we're speaking a different language here. What does the word "evidence" mean to you, exactly? I didn't even say that it was true that the remark was a response. I just said that there was evidence that it was.

It doesn't mean proof, if that's what you're asking. But simply demonstrating that two events follow each other in time does not imply - at all - that they are causally related. In this context, I would take evidence to mean: data which support a conclusion.

EDIT: the issue is not whether an eye witness account would constitute evidence of an event having occurred, the issue is the notion that the comment was made "in response to" which implies it wouldn't have happened had she not participated, and that it was somehow directed at her, or in reference to her contribution, or in reference to her, or in some other way pertained to her.

I feel this is worth pulling out of that novel of a post so it is more likely to be seen.

ardent wrote:

what she has actually done is inflict serious setbacks on blacks, black women, and women in general and specifically in tech fields gaining and maintaining the kind of respect that is necessary for these kinds of problems to diminish naturally.

You want the real enemy of women in tech? Adria Richards is your man.

Maybe I am overestimating humanity but I do think that most people realize you shouldnt judge an entire group based on the actions of a single individual.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Actually it isn't evidence - that's a post hoc fallacy. Just because two events follow each other in time, does not mean one event caused the other.

I feel like we're speaking a different language here. What does the word "evidence" mean to you, exactly? I didn't even say that it was true that the remark was a response. I just said that there was evidence that it was.

It doesn't mean proof, if that's what you're asking. But simply demonstrating that two events follow each other in time does not imply - at all - that they are causally related. In this context, I would take evidence to mean: data which support a conclusion.

And you don't think that the fact that a person who was there and witnessed the events interpreted the remark as a response supports the conclusion? I'm not claiming that her interpretation establishes the objective truth of the conclusion. In fact she sounds pretty unreliable and I have no doubt that the objective truth about what happened is unrecoverable at this point. However, her statement is still evidence. Your accusing me of a post hoc fallacy seems to me to assume that I'm taking her statement at face value. I'm not. I'm merely saying that her impression of what happened, right or wrong, is evidence that that's what happened, whether it did or not. This is well within the established meaning of the word "evidence".

Josephine, the question is, for many people, whether a reasonable person would consider the comment to be demeaning to women or reinforcing gender stereotypes. Absent of the actual joke, we only have Adria's word to go on that it was sexist in nature. I think no matter what, we can all agree a joke about "big dongles" is sophomoric and probably not something that you'd say to your boss. So was it workplace-appropriate? Nope. That doesn't mean that it's sexist.

Some people are more likely to be offended then others. There are people who get offended when their kids are taught that all humans are homo sapiens, for goodness sake. There is a complete difference between "that offends me" and "that was offensive". I am a white male. I think that for that, I can't come up with something that equally offends me. A woman making jokes about melon sizes would not offend me, but I do realize that this isn't analogous.

The question is: how reasonable, really, is the idea that a joke about a body part used in sex, is inherently has a covert meaning. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I don't think her level of offense is reasonable, based just on the fact that it was a "big dongle" joke. Now, if they had said "geez, look at all these women here. You know they only came for the vendors with the big dongles", I'm fully in support of her being offended.

But absent the exact joke, all we have is a joke about dongles. Is that workplace appropriate? Nope. Is it sexist? Not in my mind. Nor in the mind of many people here, apparently. I'm against misogyny. I'm for shutting down the idea that women in tech should somehow be lesser. What I am not for is for people arguing that "I'm offended" implicitly means that they are correct, or that the other person was wrong.

I can choose to be offended by anything I want. I can claim that calling one end of a USB cord "male" and the other "female" is offensive because it reinforces the heterosexual agenda and traditional gender norms. Does that mean that other people should accept my offense as reasonable? In my mind, no.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Actually it isn't evidence - that's a post hoc fallacy. Just because two events follow each other in time, does not mean one event caused the other.

I feel like we're speaking a different language here. What does the word "evidence" mean to you, exactly? I didn't even say that it was true that the remark was a response. I just said that there was evidence that it was.

It doesn't mean proof, if that's what you're asking. But simply demonstrating that two events follow each other in time does not imply - at all - that they are causally related. In this context, I would take evidence to mean: data which support a conclusion.

EDIT: the issue is not whether an eye witness account would constitute evidence of an event having occurred, the issue is the notion that the comment was made "in response to" which implies it wouldn't have happened had she not participated, and that it was somehow directed at her, or in reference to her contribution, or in reference to her, or in some other way pertained to her.

The remark being made "in response to" is an event. If the remark was made but not "in response to" then one thing happened and if the remark was made but "in response to" then another thing happened.

Why don't you tell me what the word evidence means to you, then. To me a statement from an eyewitness is evidence.

Evidence means evidence. You know, something that proves your argument. What you are doing is called inference. You have a dubious statement from the "victim"/"crazy woman who does this sort of thing a lot" that a third person made a sexual joke about "forking" after she injected herself into a conversation and, lacking any context whatsoever, claims that is evidence it was said because she joined the conversation.

Look up in the dictionary what a "false cause fallacy" is

In fact, you can't even claim you have evidence a sexual forking joke was made because Adria Richards is the textbook definition of a biased witness.

"To foster" is not "to express," and "to foster" doesn't imply intentionality. Sexualized remarks in professional contexts in response to professional conversation are sexist because they foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.

How?

Because they often make women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome.

You have a possible link between sexism (of a sorts anyway) and "mak[ing] women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome". The next step is to establish a link between "mak[ing] women feel that their presence and participation other than as a sexual object is not welcome" and dongle jokes.

Kudos for being the first one to actually answer that question though.

I'm sorry, you asked for evidence that the remark was made in response to her joining the conversation. That quote is evidence. You may not find it credible evidence. I may not even find it credible evidence. However, it is evidence. Nothing in my previous comment about whether women making dick jokes is sexist assumed that it is credible evidence.

Actually it isn't evidence - that's a post hoc fallacy. Just because two events follow each other in time, does not mean one event caused the other.

I feel like we're speaking a different language here. What does the word "evidence" mean to you, exactly? I didn't even say that it was true that the remark was a response. I just said that there was evidence that it was.

It doesn't mean proof, if that's what you're asking. But simply demonstrating that two events follow each other in time does not imply - at all - that they are causally related. In this context, I would take evidence to mean: data which support a conclusion.

And you don't think that the fact that a person who was there and witnessed the events interpreted the remark as a response supports the conclusion? I'm not claiming that her interpretation establishes the objective truth of the conclusion. In fact she sounds pretty unreliable and I have no doubt that the objective truth about what happened is unrecoverable at this point. However, her statement is still evidence. Your accusing me of a post hoc fallacy seems to me to assume that I'm taking her statement at face value. I'm not. I'm merely saying that her impression of what happened, right or wrong, is evidence that that's what happened, whether it did or not. This is well within the established meaning of the word "evidence".

The issue is in whether they have sufficient information to connect the two events causally. If I threw a snowball at someone (it's snowing here), and they shouted obscenities at me, i think we'd agree the eye witness could reasonably reliably causally connect the two.

Assuming for a moment the sexual forking comment occurred - it is disputed, as we've admitted - it came in response - supposedly - to the other developer talking about forking the guy on stage's repo. In other words, it was in response to what the other developer in the conversation said, rather than directly in response to something Richards said. It didn't directly follow her contribution in the conversation, as far as I understand it, according to her own testimony.

From Richard's testimony, we can form our own opinion as to whether the two events were causally related. We needn't rely on her impression.

Josephine, the question is, for many people, whether a reasonable person would consider the comment to be demeaning to women or reinforcing gender stereotypes. Absent of the actual joke, we only have Adria's word to go on that it was sexist in nature. I think no matter what, we can all agree a joke about "big dongles" is sophomoric and probably not something that you'd say to your boss. So was it workplace-appropriate? Nope. That doesn't mean that it's sexist.

Some people are more likely to be offended then others. There are people who get offended when their kids are taught that all humans are homo sapiens, for goodness sake. There is a complete difference between "that offends me" and "that was offensive". I am a white male. I think that for that, I can't come up with something that equally offends me. A woman making jokes about melon sizes would not offend me, but I do realize that this isn't analogous.

The question is: how reasonable, really, is the idea that a joke about a body part used in sex, is inherently has a covert meaning. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I don't think her level of offense is reasonable, based just on the fact that it was a "big dongle" joke. Now, if they had said "geez, look at all these women here. You know they only came for the vendors with the big dongles", I'm fully in support of her being offended.

But absent the exact joke, all we have is a joke about dongles. Is that workplace appropriate? Nope. Is it sexist? Not in my mind. Nor in the mind of many people here, apparently. I'm against misogyny. I'm for shutting down the idea that women in tech should somehow be lesser. What I am not for is for people arguing that "I'm offended" implicitly means that they are correct, or that the other person was wrong.

I can choose to be offended by anything I want. I can claim that calling one end of a USB cord "male" and the other "female" is offensive because it reinforces the heterosexual agenda and traditional gender norms. Does that mean that other people should accept my offense as reasonable? In my mind, no.

Yeah, thanks. None of the kind of stuff you mention offends me, actually. What offended me, and the only reason I got entangled in this silly conversation, is the fact that a bunch of morons downvoted a perfectly sensible comment by Carolyn Ann about 6 pages ago and then proceeded to misunderstand, misquote, and misconstrue every point she made. I couldn't give two shits about Adria Richards' or what really happened. My main concern is with the tenor of this comment thread, which is sophomoric at best and really hostile at worst.

Yeah, thanks. None of the kind of stuff you mention offends me, actually. What offended me, and the only reason I got entangled in this silly conversation, is the fact that a bunch of morons downvoted a perfectly sensible comment by Carolyn Ann about 6 pages ago and then proceeded to misunderstand, misquote, and misconstrue every point she made. I couldn't give two shits about Adria Richards' or what really happened. My main concern is with the tenor of this comment thread, which is sophomoric at best and really hostile at worst.

Nothing I read from Carolyn Ann would be described as sensible.On topic perhaps, but not sensible.

The issue is in whether they have sufficient information to connect the two events causally. If I threw a snowball at someone (it's snowing here), and they shouted obscenities at me, i think we'd agree the eye witness could reasonably reliably causally connect the two.

Assuming for a moment the sexual forking comment occurred - it is disputed, as we've admitted - it came in response - supposedly - to the other developer talking about forking the guy on stage's repo. In other words, it was in response to what the other developer in the conversation said, rather than directly in response to something Richards said. It didn't directly follow her contribution in the conversation, as far as I understand it, according to her own testimony.

From Richard's testimony, we can form our own opinion as to whether the two events were causally related. We needn't rely on her impression.

Dude, read David Hume. There is no such thing as sufficient information to connect two events causally. It is logically incoherent to claim that there is. This was well understood by the 18th century. All claims of causality are overlain on the world by human intelligence, and eyewitness reports are all that we have.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.